Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-05-30

pentance. II is manifest that sin 81
heinous as to call out SO terrible
judgment against it must be something
more than any offense that can be or
dinarily committed. 1t may be said
that all our sins, no matter how trivial,
are sfenses against the Holy Ghost;
but it requires something away beyond
these to incur the awful penalty ad-
judged in the text Blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit can never be com
mitted meaningly unless the conscience
is so scared and hardened-unless the
the man guilty of it has by his acts and
life led up to it by course of thought,
conduct and action that has finally placed
him beyond the reach of hope; whose
natural perversity. schooled in the
ways of sin and viciousness, has brought
him to that terrible state of rebellion
against God and His laws that he is alto
gether impervious to the divine teach
ing-impenetrable to the soft and benign
influences of religion-lost to every good
example-hardened against every holy
impulse-scoffing against not alone the
majesty Of Christ, but reviling and out.
raging the Holy Spirit, the messenger of
the Godhead and the manifestation of
divine mercy in every Christian heart.
1t is only against natures so brItalized--
so lost to the knowledge of human help.
lessness and human hopes, and so uni
versally given over to the Devil and his
works of darkness, that even If the doom
of perdition were not sealed ag ,inst
them by the Word, they would never.
theless be beyond the pale of salvation
from their own ingrained wickedness--
that this irrevocable doom is pronounced
The poor souls--and some of them are
struggling in this church that are so
spiritually sensitive to their shortcom.
ings that they fancy they are under
the awful ban of the text-these are not
the ones who could incur go dreadful
penalty. The very fact that their con.
sciences are so acute is sufficient to show
that they could not be guilty of the
awful sin of blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost. Deliberate, determined, wilful.
intentional blasphemy-blasphemy of
word and of act, from the mind and
from the heart, is the character of the
offense which Christ referred to; but
this abandonment of soul is not
possible to him who is yet SO
sensitive as to fear that he has com.
mitted it, and to be in constant despair
lest he has passed over the line where
mercy ceases and irrevocable doom com.
1t is well known that some of
the purest and sweetest lives have been
with this fancy, showing that
the finest wrought natures are so con-
scious of their own defects that they
often magnify their vices even beyond
the border line of forgiveness. But the
Divine mercy covers as with mantle
all poor mortals who have even a spark |
of faith and tear of repentance left;
for these are not and cannot be included |
in the judgment pronounced upon |
against the Holy Ghost. We
are nowhere told in the Bible where the |
line between pardonable and unpardona.
BILE sin is drawn. We must locate it for |
ourselves out of our own consciences. |
Away out on the broad expanse of the |
South Pacific Ocean rise rugged rocks |
that are ever enveloped in haze OF |
mist that shuts them out from the |
keenest eye of the navigator. Mariners
know about where they are from their |
charts, but so dreaded are they that no |
captain will take any chances when he |
is in that part of the ocean. but steers |
many miles clear of them. So is it with |
the sin against the Holy Ghost. We
cannot tell exactly where is the boun.
aary line of that eternal ocean of tor
ments. We know about where it is
and that is enough. Like the
prudent mariner, we should steer our
life.bark far away from it. Its ap-
proaches are enveloped in impenetrable
mists, and we should keep out of them.
lest before it is too late we find our craft
rushing to destruction upon the rocks of
eternal ruin.